The Growth Of The Internet [Infographic]

Sometimes even the smallest amount of data can provide a huge clue about where technology is heading. For example, by having a look at the browser statistics, you can derive where technology is heading when it comes to services and online technology. For example, if you were to see a huge increase in mobile Safari usage, maybe that is was becoming the preferred mobile browser, you can be pretty sure that Flash isn’t going to be the best technology to use for your website. You’d then do better in using another approach or language that might give you the opportunity to achieve the same results as you would have had with Flash. There are of course other statistics that might push you into the user or company dedicated online standards.

If we take a look at some rather interesting statistics, created by Web Hosting Geeks, about the growth of the Internet, we quickly see that the increase in usage hasn’t at all stagnated. It is moving forward like a sandstorm in the desert. It’s ever more important for companies to be available on the Internet in order to take advantage of the many direct and instant customer interactions that are available. Without it, a company could easily become yesterday’s news just because a competitor has embraced the new way of finding, interacting and serving customers all around the world.

Even though it doesn’t say, I think these statistics are based on the increase over a year. Interestingly, Asia and the Middle East has had the biggest increase based on a 10-year period with an increase of over 700%. That’s quite a lot of growth, and I think that we’ll see even more of that. As the the Internet population grows, there will be an ever bigger demand to be able to do everything on the Internet. Research shows that we are not too far from being able to completely work in virtual realities. The technologies are there, but it’s the people and the infrastructure between them that needs some ironing out in order for this scenario to take place. It’s the developers who really decide when this will become a reality, so I guess it’s just a matter of time until we’ll see full company communities walking around in a virtual world doing their every day business.

This scenario is one that is a preferred in the many villages in Africa since their real world infrastructure is usually very complicated, and being able to work through the Internet would be the beginning of solving an ever growing poverty problem. There are actually several foundations that are dedicated to seeing these goals come true, and when they have managed to incorporate their vision into the world, I think we will see even bigger growth in the Internet population.